Hate crime fears as police search for gunman who shoots five people, killing three

Apr 8, 2012

Search for the shooter ... US police in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo: MSNBC screengrab

Residents of a US neighbourhood say they are afraid a shooter is still looking for victims after five people were shot - and three killed - in just a few hours.

"We're all nervous," said Renaldo Works, 52, who was getting his hair cut at the crowded Charlie's Angels Forever Hair Style Shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday morning.

"I've got a 15-year-old, and I'm not going to let him out late. People are scared. We need facts.

"You don't want to be a prisoner in your own home," he said.

Police are still waiting for the results of forensic tests, but investigators think the shootings are linked because they happened around the same time within a 5-kilometre span, and all five victims were out walking when they were shot.

All the victims are black, and community members met this weekend in an effort to calm any unrest.

One of the victims told police that the shooter was a white man driving a white pickup truck who stopped to ask for directions before opening fire.

Officer Jason Willingham said on Saturday the pickup was spotted in the area of three of the shootings.

"We don't have one definitive way where this investigation is headed," Officer Willingham said. "Right now, that's the only thing we have to go on."

More than two dozen officers are investigating the case, along with the FBI, the US Marshals Service and other agencies, Officer Willingham said.

As investigators searched for the killer, the tension and fear among some of the city's black residents was palpable.

"It's got everybody on edge," said Louis Johnson, 24. "Everybody is saying the same thing - it's a white guy in a white pickup or a Tahoe."

Barber Charles Jones, 40, said Tulsa's north side has had its share of crime problems, but residents have never faced a series of random killings like these.

At a neighbourhood park a couple of blocks from two of the shootings, parents kept close watch over their kids during an Easter egg hunt.

"The first I heard of it, it sounded like some type of gangland thing," said 47-year-old parent Wayne Bell, who was hiding plastic eggs in the grass.

"Everybody's asking why. Everybody has to just stick together. It's more of a keep close to the nest thing right now."

The Reverend Warren Blakney Sr., president of the Tulsa chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, a civil rights organisation, said "avid distrust" between the black community and the police department had raised concerns that the shootings wouldn't be fully investigated, and he contacted police to emphasise the need for them to work together to avoid vigilantism.

"We have to handle this because there are a number of African-American males who are not going to allow this to happen in their neighbourhood," he said.

"We're trying to quell the feeling of 'let's get someone' and we will make as certain as we can that this isn't pushed under the rug."

Tulsa's police department has been tainted by accusations of corruption.

Three ex-police officers and a former federal agent were sentenced to prison in December after a two-year investigation involving allegations of falsified search warrants, nonexistent informants, perjury and stolen drugs and money.

Two other ex-officers were acquitted of stealing money during an FBI sting but fired after an internal affairs investigation.

More than a half-dozen lawsuits have been filed by people who claim they were wrongfully locked up by police, and nearly 40 people had their convictions overturned or prison sentences commuted as a result of the corruption probe.

Prosecutors have suggested the five police officers who were charged were part of a broader plot in which corrupt officers stole money and drugs, conducted illegal searches and fabricated evidence without fear of getting caught.

Four of Friday's shooting victims were found in yards, and the fifth in a street.

Fields was found wounded about 1am local time. Friday, Clark was found in a street about an hour later, and Allen was discovered in the yard of a funeral home about 8.30am, though investigators believe he was shot much earlier.

Minutes after Fields was found, police found two men with gunshot wounds in another yard two blocks away.

They were taken to hospitals in critical condition but were expected to survive, police said. Willingham said one of those men described the shooter as being white.

"The police chief has assured me they are doing all they can," Blakney said. "We don't want anybody else hurt, white or black."